1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic devices and systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to mobile communication devices and systems having adaptable features.
2. Background Art
As communication devices have matured in everyday use, the often countervailing pressures of feature inclusion and overall cost have led to a progression of devices that are increasingly complex, fragile, hard to exploit fully, and power hungry.
For example, a conventional mobile telephone includes the ability to network with other devices over typically three or more different communication links, where each interface associated with a particular communication link is separate and discrete, which takes up immense space, is costly to provide, and typically represents at least a phantom power draw that, summing over each discrete interface, substantially reduces battery life. Moreover, each additional interface increases a risk of interference between interfaces, which almost always increases design costs, and either limits utility or further worsens battery life due to additional required amplification and signal segregation circuitry. These general detriments are particularly troublesome because, typically, a communication device user is unable to exploit more than a few communication interfaces at any one time, yet the user is always subject to the reduced battery life and must pay extra for the privilege.
In addition to network interface complexity, many conventional mobile telephones incorporate a wide array of additional discrete sensor components used to detect ambient noise, for example, or to enable automated features. However, each additional discrete device is typically expensive to manufacture and mount in a mobile telephone enclosure, particularly as more features are packed into each communication device. Moreover, as each new sensor takes up additional surface area of a typical mobile telephone enclosure, the resulting user interface becomes less intuitive and harder to access while attempting to exploit the added functionality provided by, for example, new sensors.
In order to offset the increasing materials and design costs of adding each new market-driven functionality, manufacturers have typically turned to relatively inexpensive materials and implementations to form components for communication devices. Unfortunately, such materials and implementations are typically less robust than more expensive materials, and so the quality of particular component functionality is noticeably reduced, as is useful lifetime. For example, although speakers are integral to every electronic communication device, there is constant pressure to make speakers smaller and cheaper to manufacture to make room for the space and cost of, for example, additional sensors and additional network interfaces. This often results in communication device speakers that have substantially distorted outputs and that are extremely fragile in common usage, especially when driven near the substantially size and material-dependent limits of their operating range.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing a communication device that reduces a number and cost of discrete components used to enable desirable features.